Power blackouts fall to record low / Wind power record expected

In 2016, the German power supply system was more reliable than ever before, according to the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE). The average German power consumer had to cope without electricity for 11.5 minutes, compared to 11.9 minutes in 2015. The VDE said the improvement was mainly due to favourable weather conditions. Most German power consumers were not affected by blackouts at all last year, as they only experience an outage once in four years on average, the VDE added.

Wind generation is forecast to climb to a record on Sunday, creating more output than needed and driving electricity prices below zero, reports Jesper Starn for Bloomberg. It would be the first time this year that the average price for a whole day is negative, not just for specific hours. Wind output is forecast to peak at more than 39 gigawatts on Sunday morning, equivalent to the output of about 40 nuclear reactors and enough to meet more than half of Germany’s total demand.

The roll-out of renewable energies in Germany is key to reaching the country’s climate targets, according to the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). In a publication on the impact of green energies on emissions, the agency says that renewables increasingly replace fossil fuels in all sectors. In 2016, renewables reduced Germany’s emissions by a net total of 160 million tonnes, of which 119 million tonnes in the power sector, according to the UBA.

As expected, Germany’s future energy and climate policy has emerged as the main stumbling block in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s effort to form a government coalition of her conservatives, the Free Democrats, and the Green Party. According to media reports, in their first round of talks dedicated to energy, climate, and environment-related issues, the parties agreed that Germany should continue to aim for meeting the existing national and international climate targets for 2020, 2030, and 2050.

Yet, the four parties disagreed over the exact phrasing, i.e. whether Germany “must” reach the targets, or whether it should merely “try” to do so, reports Süddeutsche Zeitung. The negotiators are scheduled to meet again next week to continue their talks about the climate.

Consumer grid fees rose by nine percent last year, and are unlikely to decrease much next year, according to a market report drafted by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), which is due to be published soon and was leaked to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Grid problems are unlikely to improve next year, the newspaper quotes from the report. Compensation payments to wind turbine operators who could not feed their power into the grid temporarily because of network constraints doubled to 643 million euros last year, according to the article.

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